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The Taste of River Water

new and selected poemsCate Kennedy

‘Pack[s] an emotional punch. Kennedy excels at drawing extraordinary details out of the seemingly mundane minutiae of everyday life, with a sharp, focused eye for the politics of the personal. Her depictions of rural life and the Australian landscape are particularly evocative. It's a welcome addition to the often-underrated canon of Australian poetry.’

Herald Sun

‘Cate Kennedy presents a long feast in The Taste of River Water. In describing the act of living — as she does with such potency; mouth-watering — she creates a new life.’

InPress Magazine

‘[Like] stepping into water from air that is almost the same temperature, hardly noticing one is at the will of the sea, suddenly ... [Kennedy] relies on getting the reader comfortable before providing something like this change in the atmosphere by the time the poem is out.’

Luke Beesley, Readings Monthly

‘Kennedy writes fine poetry ... marvellous.’

The Age

‘Kennedy is at her most effective when dropping spartan images into her lines like stones into a lake. Several pages later the ripples are still moving.’

Kate Fagan, The Australian

‘Kennedy's career as a poet has evolved in parallel with her success as a short-story writer and novelist and her accessible poems display the hallmarks of a poet increasingly well-practiced in her craft. There is much to admire here.’ ** (four stars)

Bookseller and Publisher

Disarming, warm, and always accessible, Cate Kennedy’s poems make ordinary experiences glow. Everything that suffuses her well-loved prose is here: compassion, insight, lyrical precision, and the clear, minimalist eye that reveals how life can turn on a single moment. Musing on the undercurrents and interconnections between legacy, memory, motherhood, and the natural world, the poems in this exhilarating collection begin on the surface and then take us, gracefully and effortlessly, to a far more thought-provoking place. Grounded in lived experience, with all its mysteries and consolations, they resonate with a passionate, sensuous honesty.

‘Pack[s] an emotional punch. Kennedy excels at drawing extraordinary details out of the seemingly mundane minutiae of everyday life, with a sharp, focused eye for the politics of the personal. Her depictions of rural life and the Australian landscape are particularly evocative. It's a welcome addition to the often-underrated canon of Australian poetry.’

Herald Sun

‘Cate Kennedy presents a long feast in The Taste of River Water. In describing the act of living — as she does with such potency; mouth-watering — she creates a new life.’

InPress Magazine

‘[Like] stepping into water from air that is almost the same temperature, hardly noticing one is at the will of the sea, suddenly ... [Kennedy] relies on getting the reader comfortable before providing something like this change in the atmosphere by the time the poem is out.’

Luke Beesley, Readings Monthly

‘Kennedy writes fine poetry ... marvellous.’

The Age

‘Kennedy is at her most effective when dropping spartan images into her lines like stones into a lake. Several pages later the ripples are still moving.’

CATEGORIES / tags

AUTHOR

Cate Kennedy

Cate Kennedy is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won the People’s Choice Award in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2010. She is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has been published widely. Her first collection, Dark Roots, was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. She is also the author of a travel memoir, Sing, and Don’t Cry, and the poetry collections Joyflight, Signs of Other Fires and The Taste of River Water, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry in 2011. She lives on a secluded bend of the Broken River in north-east Victoria.